Simon Green - Ghost of a Dream

“JC, really, I can’t see anybody ,” said Lissa. “There’s no-one there!”

“You have to learn to see with better eyes,” said JC. He grinned and tapped his sunglasses significantly with the tip of one finger. “It’s a larger world we live in than most people know or would want to know. Packed full, with the living and the dead. Because sometimes even death can’t keep some people apart.”

“You are seriously freaking me out here, JC,” said Lissa.

JC strode across the stage, towards the wings. Kim waited till he’d almost reached her, then she drifted backwards, still smiling, leading him on. JC plunged into the wings after her, and Lissa trotted unhappily along behind him.

“I really don’t like where this is going, JC.”

Kim led JC backstage, then down into the narrow corridors at the rear of the theatre, and into the deeper recesses of the old building. Always staying just ahead of JC, no matter how hard he tried to catch up. Lissa bustled along beside him, determined to keep up, shooting dark glances in all directions and muttering to herself. JC didn’t pay much attention to his surroundings, except to note that he didn’t think he’d been this way before. He kept trying to talk to Kim: Are you all right? Are you still being held against your will or have you broken free? Why won’t you speak to me? But Kim never answered him; instead, she smiled back at him. Sometimes encouragingly; sometimes sadly. But never a word. She drifted steadily backwards before him, her feet hovering a few inches above the floor.

“Can I say,” said Lissa, a bit brusquely and half out of breath, “that I am getting seriously weirded out by this one-sided conversation? There’s no-one there, JC! I can see the whole length of this corridor quite clearly, and we are the only things in it! Trust me on this!”

“Try to keep up, Lissa,” said JC, not unkindly. “My Kim may be dead, but she is definitely not departed. She is a ghost, and not everyone can see ghosts.”

“I saw that crawling man!”

“Yes,” said JC. “So you did. Interesting, that.”

Kim finally slowed to a stop before one particular closed door and hovered there. She rose and fell slowly in mid air, her long red hair streaming away to both sides as though she were underwater. She looked entirely solid, but JC knew that if he reached out to her, there wouldn’t be anything there. He loved her, but he’d never been able to touch her. Lissa looked from him to the closed door and back again.

“Is she still there? From the soppy look on your face, I’m assuming she still is. What’s behind that door? What’s she saying?”

“She isn’t saying anything,” said JC, sharply.

Lissa sniffed loudly. “No name on the door, nothing to indicate what’s behind it. Doesn’t look any different from all the other doors we passed to get here. Looks like a store-room to me. Do we go in?”

JC looked at Kim. She drifted to one side and gestured at the door; and it swung slowly back to reveal the room beyond.

“Heads up!” said Lissa. “That door opened on its own!”

“That was Kim,” said JC. “Come on…”

He started towards the open door, then stopped as he realised that Lissa was hanging back.

“You’re not really thinking of going in there, are you?” said Lissa. “There could be anything in there. And in this theatre, anything covers a hell of a lot of ground!”

“Kim brought me here,” said JC. “She must have her reasons…”

But when he looked at Kim to confirm this, she wasn’t there. JC flinched as though he’d been hit. A cold hand closed around his heart and squeezed like it would never let go. It was actually harder for him to deal with Kim’s absence now that she was coming and going in his life. Lissa followed his gaze.

“Am I to take it, from that wounded, tragic look on your face, that ghost girl isn’t with us any more?”

“No,” said JC. “She disappeared. She does that.”

“So that makes two of us who can’t see her,” said Lissa.

JC ignored her, thinking hard as he studied the open door. “Why would she bring me here, then vanish? Unless there’s something…significant in this room. Something I need to see…She only appeared before when I was in danger. My guardian-angel ghost. Am I in danger here? Or do I need to see what’s in this room to avoid some future danger?”

“He’s talking, but he’s not talking to me,” said Lissa.

JC shot her a sudden grin. “I’m going in. To kick a few things around, start some trouble, see what I can stir up. You can stay out here if you want.”

“Sweetie,” said Lissa, “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

They both plunged through the doorway, ready for anything. They found themselves in a fairly large room, packed from wall to wall with row upon row of theatrical costumes, hanging on metal stands. Hundreds of the things, a massive peacock display of styles and colours. There was nothing else in the room, no tables or chairs, not even a mirror on the wall in which to admire one’s new costume. Bare, plastered walls, no window, only a single naked light bulb hanging down, filling the room with an unflattering, almost forensic light. JC looked at Lissa.

“Do you have any idea what these costumes are doing here?”

“Nothing to do with me, sweetie,” said Lissa. She looked the costumes over and sniffed loudly to show how unimpressed she was. “I have to say, I don’t like the look of them. There’s something…off about those costumes.”

“Presumably Benjamin and Elizabeth ordered them, for the play.”

“I hardly think so,” said Lissa. “Rehearsals aren’t due to start until after the renovations are completed. Why hire and ship in expensive costumes before the new paint’s even dry? Besides, the play is set very firmly, not to say remorselessly, in the present day. I mean, look at all this! There are enough costumes here for a dozen plays or one light opera revival! Everything from Shakespeare to Restoration comedy, Victorian formal wear to military uniforms. I don’t like this, JC. They shouldn’t be here…And I don’t think we should, either.”

“Kim brought me here…”

“So you keep saying! But I never saw a damned thing! Forget your ghostly girl-friend…Trust a ghost hunter to have a dead girl-friend, which now that I think about it, is decidedly icky…You’ll be telling me you sleep in a coffin next.”

“Never on a first date,” said JC.

“Oh, I feel so much safer now,” said Lissa.

They shared a smile and looked around them. The costumes stared silently back.

“There must be some good reason for us to be here,” JC said stubbornly. “And since the only things here are the costumes…I suppose we should inspect them. Maybe there’ll be a note in a pocket or something…”

He stepped up to the first row, and briskly checked out the clothes, one at a time. Lissa moved reluctantly forward while making it very clear she didn’t want any part of it. She wouldn’t touch anything until she’d watched JC man-handle a whole bunch of them without suffering any ill effects. And then she sighed heavily and pulled out a costume here and there, looking it over carefully and checking the details.

“Good-quality material,” she said, finally. “High-end workmanship. But…”

“But?” said JC. “But what?” He held a Napoleon uniform up against himself, to see how he’d look in it, then reluctantly put it back again.

“But,” Lissa said firmly, “a lot of the details are wrong . Mixed periods in the same outfit, wrong kinds of pockets and trimmings, out-of-period materials, important bits and pieces missing…No professional costumier would make mistakes like this. This…is more like someone faking it. Producing costumes good enough to fool the eye but only from a distance. Amateur night. These clothes look like costumes, JC; but they aren’t.”